Palm has started a week-long discussion board on Facebook, where questions and comments can be sent to Matt Crowley, Palm’s Product Manager. There are several interesting questions and responses so far, including Matt chiming in on Palm’s decision to forgo expandable storage on their new handset. Check out after the break for quotes from Matt on expandable storage and more.
“Design was the highest goal on the Palm Pre project. The phone has to look and function great in the hand and up against the face on a call. The decision to include or not include expandable storage is an easy one when design is the highest priority. The physical size of the device would have been compromised if we added another physical component to Pre. Just a millimeter can seriously impact the curvature of the design in a way that minimizes the design intent. We wanted to maintain a slick curved slider design without building out too much thickness. When you look at the two parts of the product and see how thin they really are, you may be amazed that we were able to fit everything in. And yes, all the stuff does fit.
The other advantage of embedded memory is that you have a large amount of storage out of the box for media and files. Including 8GBs of storage on the phone is a large amount of storage for many people, but not all. Yes, not all. We know that not everyone will be happy, but that is one of many decisions that needs to be made…”
The decision to not give the Pre expandable memory may be more of a problem than Palm anticipates, as it is a deal-breaker to some users. As it stands, the Pre will ‘mount’ as a mass-storage USB device, allowing transfer of music/video/pictures and other media for use on the device. Matt insists that Palm’s ‘Cloud,’ and the internet in general, “is a BIG microSD card.” This may be true for contacts, calendar, YouTube and internet radio; however I don’t see many people able to store a sizable music/video library on 8GB of fixed storage for use on a commute by train or plane where connectivity isn’t necessarily available. In Palm’s defense, they have given the typical user quite a bit of fixed storage to play with. The question remains, though, will Palm introduce a higher capacity Pre or other webOS device shortly after the Pre’s release?
The discussion goes on with inquiries to the handset’s lack of IR (infrared) communication, something that has been included on Palm devices since the Palm III. Also touched on by Mr. Crowley are the points of stressing the design to make Pre one-handed operational, how their brand of ‘Synergy’ will actually work by aggregating multiple sources of contact and calendar data, and what types of third party software Palm already knows will be available. Check it out for a good read, and chime in with your own thoughts/questions!
[via PalmInfoCenter]
